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IntroductionFew studies have given much attention to learners of English as an additionallanguage (EAL) with dyslexia (Martin, 2005, 2009; Kormos and Kontra, 2008; Siegal,2008). It is even more unusual to find studies about these learners’ own views andtheir EAL learning experience (Burden and Burdett, 2007). This scarcity of studiesis largely due to four factors: first, the predominant monolingual assumptionsbehind much research in dyslexia, although bilingual learners and learnersusing additional languages are equally as likely to be dyslexic as monolinguals,and notably dyslexia may manifest itself differently across different languages;second, it is only a recent development in English Language Teaching (TESOL, EFL,EAL) to research learners with special needs (Kormos and Kontra, 2008); third,the difficulties of using appropriate research methods regarding dyslexia, sincelearners with dyslexia commonly find it difficult to express themselves; fourth, theneed to develop specific research methods which are appropriate for youngerlearners.This paper reports on a project investigating the perceptions and practices oflearning skills of English and other school subjects of young dyslexic learnersin Singapore by using the research method of metaphor analysis. This projectis believed to be the first of its kind to relate dyslexia and English (EAL) as acurriculum or academic language in a multilingual context through metaphoranalysis. The term EAL means here that English is an additional language used as amedium for learning. The project aims 1) to find out perceptions of learning Englishand other subjects from primary school EAL learners with dyslexia in Singaporein order to understand these learners; 2) to know what methods they use toovercome their difficulties; 3) to employ the metaphor analysis method developedby the principal investigator (Cortazzi and Jin, 1999; Jin and Cortazzi, 2008; 2009,2011), and used successfully for researching perceptions and beliefs regardingEnglish as a foreign language (EFL) held by learners and shown to be effective withfirst language (L1) learners with dyslexia in Britain (Burden and Burdett, 2007). Inthis project, this method will be extended to young EAL learners with dyslexia (seefurther in the methodology section).It is generally perceived that learners with dyslexia in Singapore would havesimilar needs to those in other English-speaking countries since English is thelanguage medium for education there. However, in reality, many Singaporeanlearners regard Chinese as their mother tongue or home language, e.g. 32 percent of Chinese speakers in Singapore use only Chinese (Singapore PopulationSurvey, 2000), yet they have to learn to use English as the curriculum language inschool. To this group of learners with dyslexia, English is certainly perceived as anadditional language. This situation adds complications for them in coping with theirdifficulties with dyslexia.Further, it is difficult to use conventional research methods (e.g. questionnairesurveys or formal interviews) to find out their views and perceptions due to theirdifficulties in reading and writing or sometimes in expressing their thoughts orally,which demands more working memory and sequential processing. Researchershave been trying different methods to investigate the views from these learners14 | Singapore Primary School